Omega, of Switzerland, sued Costco for copyright infringement, because Costco was obtaining the watches from unauthorized European dealers that sold them far cheaper than U.S.-based Omega distributors. Omega copyrighted the watch design in the United States by imprinting the company’s emblem on the underside of the timepiece.

So with that, the clear incentive is to produce your goods outside the US, apply copyright via the method used in this case, and then sue all used goods stores out of existence.

You know how software is licensed? If this idea lasts, hardware will go the same way.

I'm back in Dallas, and I'm still waiting for network access and the work laptop to arrive. That's the bad news; the good news is, I do have an image with the entire system on it, and I'm having a look at the overrides and extensions (we are currently on VW 7.6), looking for potential issues in an upgrade to VW 7.7.1.

I was a bit worried about the Dataset mods they've made, but having looked at them a bit more, I'm less worried. What I really need to do is get network access so that I can build a 7.7.1 image and start really looking at things with the Comparison tool - but that's on hold. With luck, things will fall into place before the end of the week :)

It's been one of those travel days. I arrived at DCA in good shape - taking the metro down instead of driving the full way was pleasant enough - but that's when the fun ended. I was immediately confronted with a 3 hour delay, and we came very close to the DCA curfew for the size plane I'm on - had things gone just a bit more wrong, I would have been headed home, and then back to DCA for a very early flight.

Well, there are delays here at dca. I'm supposed to depart at 9:37 now, and get into dfw after midnight. Since I'm trying to save money, it also means a late dinner - I got an upgrade, so I may as well wait for the free meal up in 1st.

So... Looks like a late night and something of a tiring day at work tomorrow. Maybe I'll get the work laptop :)

Welcome to episode 9 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson, Michael Lucas-Smith, and David Buck. This week Michael and I spoke about the "Wolfpack Programming" sessions he was part of in Europe, at a couple of different events.

You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes (or any other podcatching software) using this feed directly or in iTunes with this one.

To listen now, you can either download the mp3 edition, or the AAC edition. The AAC edition comes with chapter markers. You can subscribe to either edition of the podcast directly in iTunes; just search for Smalltalk and look in the Podcast results. You can subscribe to the mp3 edition directly using this feed, or the AAC edition using this feed using any podcatching software. You can also download the podcast in ogg format.

Welcome to episode 9 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson, Michael Lucas-Smith, and David Buck. This week Michael and I spoke about the "Wolfpack Programming" sessions he was part of in Europe, at a couple of different events.

You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes (or any other podcatching software) using this feed directly or in iTunes with this one.

To listen now, you can either download the mp3 edition, or the AAC edition. The AAC edition comes with chapter markers. You can subscribe to either edition of the podcast directly in iTunes; just search for Smalltalk and look in the Podcast results. You can subscribe to the mp3 edition directly using this feed, or the AAC edition using this feed using any podcatching software. You can also download the podcast in ogg format.

One thing I really, really like about the No Baggage Challenge Life is simple. I have two shirts, two pairs of pants, one pair of shoes, socks, and underwear. I’m going out at night? A shirt and pair of pants. I’m going to a meeting? A shirt and a pair of pants.

If your goals are to:

Get no exercise during your trip

Either smell bad, or do laundry every single night

then this might work out for you. Otherwise? Not so much. I travel light - one bag for clothes, one for the electronics. Unless I'm bringing golf clubs, I don't check anything, and trust me - it's way, way simpler than the method this guy is using.

I've just pushed out a new release of BottomFeeder, now hosted here on this server. There's not a ton of changes since the last release; it's mostly a few cleanups, changes to the urls for doc, and the addition of a menu item that gets you to the license for the app.

The matte black Cr-48 won't be sold to the public, but thousands are being sent to consumers and businesses who have volunteered to test it. It introduces a new kind of operating system, called Chrome OS, that turns to the Web for almost everything.

Once you leave the comfort of your own WiFi zone, you're confronted with two things:

Generally slow public WiFi options - some free, some not

3G, which is not only not free, but tends to get really expensive if you blow the cap on your data plan

Take the plan that's available for my iPad, for instance - for $30/month (if I turn it on), I get 3G, but only 2 GB. That's not a lot of data, especially if you try to stream a couple of movies or tv shows in your hotel room.

IMHO, Google's ChromeOS isn't a bad idea, but it's going to run smack into the carrier data models, which are not at all in line with the way people want to use such devices....

Welcome to episode 14 of "That Podcast: An FNV Diary" - a podcast where Michael Lucas-Smith and I document our trials and tribulations in Fallout: New Vegas.

On today's podcast, Michael and James talk about luck, and a pacifist approach to playong the game. Michael just did a playthrough without killing anything - and it turns out that such a playthrough is a lot more practical than it sounds. He also did that playthrough with a luck of ten (casino ejection time!), while on hardcore mode.

Welcome to episode 14 of "That Podcast: An FNV Diary" - a podcast where Michael Lucas-Smith and I document our trials and tribulations in Fallout: New Vegas.

On today's podcast, Michael and James talk about luck, and a pacifist approach to playong the game. Michael just did a playthrough without killing anything - and it turns out that such a playthrough is a lot more practical than it sounds. He also did that playthrough with a luck of ten (casino ejection time!), while on hardcore mode.

Here's another video from ESUG 2010, which was held in Barcelona, Spain, the week of September 13, 2010. In this presentation, G. Richarte talks about his VM work, concentrating on JIT research. You can watch using the embedded player below, or follow this link to Vimeo.

Chris Muller has recently updated Connectors to work with Squeak 4.2 images. Connectors gives you the ability to turn Morphic into a drawing environment for making connected diagrams. This tool was developed by Ned Konz many years ago and hasn’t been able to load in an up-to-date image for some time.

I just finished A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire
- which is, as the title asserts, a survey of the last century and a half of Ottoman rule. The Ottomans fascinate me because of how long the empire survived - it was founded at the end of the 13th century, and survived into the 20th - which is a huge span of time. In that period they wiped out the last vestiges of the Romans (Byzantium), and then collapsed themselves in the wreckage of WWI.

The book covers the long period of decline, and - more importantly - how the Ottomans tried to deal with that decline. It's a sympathetic read - if you're looking for information on the Armenian Genocide, for instance, this isn't the place to look. If, on the other hand, you're interested in how they adapted to the steady rise of Europe and the industrial age, this is exactly what you want. I learned a lot about the "Young Turks", and how they were much more continuous with previous Ottoman politics than I had thought.

Why does any of that matter? Well, pull out a map of the near east, and look at all of the troubles the world has there. Never mind current politics - just realize that the map of that region was drawn by the victors of WWI, and then modified by the various successor regimes across the region as they consolidated their rule. Some of that consolidation is incomplete to this day (at least in the minds of the regimes dwelling there).

That's why the end of the Ottomans interests me so much. The empire spanned the time from the late medieval era into the 20th century, and the fallout from its collapse is still with us - just one more reminder that the past is still with us, whether we understand that or not.

As you've probably noticed, I haven't managed a release of BottomFeeder for awhile. At first, it was because I was going to ship out a 7.7 based release, then 7.7.1 came out, and then I got laid off from Cincom - so through a long chain of events, it just never happened. So...

Today I was showing my build script for Bf to some folks here at my new job - they have been using RTP manually, and I thought that a script might make things easier. In doing that, I polished my script up a bit (catching some parcel dialogs I had been ignoring), and then I was just poking around the new runtime. One of the other things that had held up a release was what I thought was a new bug, but it turns out it was simply a mistake I made when porting up to 7.7.1.

If you look in class FontPolicy, there's a method: bestFont:allowance: - it will take a font request and hand you back the best match. At the very bottom of that method is this:

At some point, I removed my override fix for that - doh. So, when I get back to my home office I'll get that dealt with, do a new build, and then look at the whole rehosting problem I mentioned yesterday. The good news is, I think I'm ready to roll it out :)

Since I'm no longer at Cincom, the location I've been using to host BottomFeeder is no longer accessible to me. So... I'll be relocating the files to this server. That will have to wait until the weekend (or possibly the Christmas break) - the bandwidth I have in the hotel here in Dallas is just barely usable, and I have nice, reliably fast connectivity at home.

The bad news is, I can't do anything about the update requests for existing downloads (unless I can get someone at Cincom to redirect those Http requests - I'll look into that).

In any event, look for an announcement on that within the next couple of weeks.

Welcome to episode 12 of "That Podcast: An FNV Diary" - a podcast where Michael Lucas-Smith and I document our trials and tribulations in Fallout: New Vegas.

On today's podcast, Michael, James and Maki talk about the final battle when you side with Caesar, and take a look ahead at what they hope to see in terms of mods and dlc. Michael and Maki also express their displeasure at the XBox exclusive first DLC coming later this month, while James lords it over them :) This may be the last of these podcasts for a bit - we think we've covered the game. We will be back when DLC and cool mods appear though, so stay subscribed.

Welcome to episode 12 of "That Podcast: An FNV Diary" - a podcast where Michael Lucas-Smith and I document our trials and tribulations in Fallout: New Vegas.

On today's podcast, Michael, James and Maki talk about the final battle when you side with Caesar, and take a look ahead at what they hope to see in terms of mods and dlc. Michael and Maki also express their displeasure at the XBox exclusive first DLC coming later this month, while James lords it over them :) This may be the last of these podcasts for a bit - we think we've covered the game. We will be back when DLC and cool mods appear though, so stay subscribed.

My first job will be to deliver some (very compressed) training. On the project I'm on, there's a deployment rolling out to a new group, and some of the developers are in town to learn about the app. As part of that process, they need to learn Smalltalk. So.... I'm doing that part :)

The schedule is tough - we have 2 1/2 days to get them through a basic intro - and having just spent a week doing this, I have my doubts about how much will stick in this short a span of time.

Oh, one small thought on those - if you've found those screencasts useful, be aware that there aren't any new ones coming in that particular series (I'm covering Pharo in my new series of casts). As Cincom releases new versions of their products, the older screencasts (especially the ones dealing with the tools) are going to start getting dated. I wsn't completely caught up to VW 771 and OS 821 when I left, so that's already happening for some of them :)

I'm writing this early on during my first day, but I have no network access - as with most larger companies, there are network security issues, so I can't just toss my Mac on the network - maybe I'll actually look into tethering as I go along :)

Interestingly enough, my start coincided with a new installation of the application I'll be working on, so I'm getting an architectural overview. Pretty useful, all things considered - it's nice to get a broad based idea about a project before you have to dive right into it. Tomorrow I go back in front of the group though - I'm supposed to deliver a Smalltalk overview. They have a pretty agressive schedule for that - I'm expected to get beyond the point I delivered last week over a five day class. I started trying to manage expectations on that yesterday :)

My hotel is ok - free breakfast, decent WiFi (better than what I got at the place I usually stayed when I went to Cincinnati, and I'm paying almost $60 less per night). There's a small exercise room as well, a fridge and microwave. For meals I'm going to have to either eat out downscale or buy microwave stuff - we'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, I'll be away from my usual network haunts during the work day.